LuigiHann

Great collection! I agree that it'd be amazing to have at least a lightbox view, and it does seem like a good fit for mixnmojo's media section (which could, honestly, also benefit greatly from a lightbox implementation). If you're looking to set up a unique collection on Archive.org it may be worth shooting a friendly message to Jason Scott (https://mastodon.archive.org/@textfiles or jason@textfiles.com I think). I don't know him well but he was a big part of setting up the Winamp Skins archive (https://archive.org/details/winampskins?tab=collection) so we've chatted a bit and he seems nice enough. He manages a lot of the interactive gaming-related collections on there (eg. https://archive.org/details/consolelivingroom?tab=collection) so he'd probably find the backgrounds collection intriguing and he wouldn't stress much about the copyright status.

I may be tempted to get the Max mech for my adorable super robot collection Edit: Dang, the site says these ones will be about 9 inches tall? They'll tower over the other figures, which will be fun to see.

I wouldn't think it was that cynical. I think it's reasonable to assume the conversation started with "How on earth do we make a movie about an 80-year-old Indiana Jones?" Having the prologue set in an era much closer to that of the original films is a natural choice from a storytelling perspective, linking the new elements to familiar ones. It lets them tell a story set in 1969 that still feels connected to the Indiana Jones we know. I think they would have written it largely the same way even if they had decided to go with a lookalike/impersonator for 1940s Indy, though I'm sure the tech emboldened them. And yeah, I'd probably refer to the prologue as de-aged Indy sequence too, mostly because that's how everyone else talks about it, but also because that tech feels so new and potentially jarring. Whether it works for you or not, it's interesting to discuss how the technique was used. I think they did a pretty good job not calling too much attention to the effect, filming the character more or less exactly as they would have otherwise. And I wonder if a generation from now when all of the movies are "old," whether new viewers will hone in on the de-aging specifically or if they'll look right past it. No real spoilers, but musing on the themes:

Saw it tonight. I didn't hate it. It kind of dragged in the middle there. The ending managed to surprise me, which tends not to be the case with big blockbuster films, so I'll give it credit for that.

That is fantastic!

I wouldn't rule out that it will happen eventually, but I feel like if they wanted to time it to cross-promote with the movie specifically, they probably would have announced it by now. But you never know. There is also that announced but elusive new Indiana Jones game being developed, so maybe they were hoping to get the timeline to sync up with that. I'd worry about the licensing being more complicated than the other adventure games, but LRG has been allowed to do a bunch of Star Wars games too, so it doesn't seem like Disney is being stingy with the properties. So I'm sure it's on their radar.

That's at least decent, though the wording of this and other posts would suggest that they were more or less done making it before they looped him in. But I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it's because they intended it as a licensed equivalent of a fan tribute and not necessarily a True Monkey Island Game that would necessitate Ron's input Yeah, it's just wrong enough that I'd almost prefer he be recast for this incarnation, or at least I would have directed Dom to deliver the lines differently. Feels like he should have a more grizzly gravely voice compared to Dom's perpetually youthful performance. Regardless, it should indeed be fun to walk around these islands in 3D. Since Tales opted to avoid recurring locales and Return returned to 2D, the only "3D" takes we've seen for Monkey and Melee islands were in Escape, which wasn't especially aiming for nostalgic immersion or authenticity the way this is.

Yeah, it's definitely a subtler effect than it usually is, since they're using a semi-realistic cloth texture and the shadows and highlights are all moving with his arms as they would in 3D. But the actual checker pattern is pleasantly static. As for Guybrush, it definitely looks like the sort of design you'd come up with by extrapolating solely from MI2 without reference to his later looks. I don't love it and I don't hate it, but it fits well with the story they're trying to tell. His actual face I suspect is assembled from the game's existing character creation assets, which would explain why it lacks a certain guybrushiness.

"LeChuck has turned the memories of this island into a prison for Guybrush" makes for a nicely flexible slice of unreality. Plausible enough that this is the "real" Guybrush, plucked from wherever in his timeline into a "what if" world of sorts and trapped there. The beard evokes the idea that he's been stuck there a long time. I don't get why they do this. Disney the faceless corporation I can understand not wanting to hire him on, and I imagine NDAs would stop the voice actors and game dev staff from mentioning it unofficially, but why wouldn't Craig Derrick or Mike Chapman who are ostensibly big fans of Ron's work at least keep him in the loop? Such a continual needless bummer with this stuff.

If the ones that came with the big Limited Run box are accurate, then the bottoms not quite all lining up at once seems authentic. I agree that one's got the cut a little low, though.

I considered trying to map out the game like that, but there's no scenario where it'd go 6-3 anyway. Nobody gets to play more than 5 squares in a real game

Yeah, that was my thought. If you start from the word "Psychonauts" with the goal of coming up with some cryptic wordplay, I can see how you'd get there.

Gotta be Psychonauts something, they're making a pun based on "noughts and crosses" (old name for tic-tac-toe) unless I'm way off.

I do think it's worth specifying that Rotten Tomatoes doesn't work like Metacritic, so a 50% RT score doesn't mean the average score was 5/10, it means that half the critics liked it. It is a good metric but some people aren't that familiar with it and might misread it. That said, peeking at the actual page it looks like a lot of even the positive reviews are in the 3/5 range, so it may not be much of a distinction here.

One of the interesting things about video game stories generally and Adventure Game stories in particular, is that your human experience playing the game is a substantial part of the story. All of the exploration, the dead ends, the exhaustion of every single branch of any possible dialog tree, all part of the experience and the pacing and the richness of the narrative in your mind. If you go back and replay one and you remember how most of the puzzles go, you may breeze through it and suddenly the plot feels less impactful than you remember.

I like whatever they're doing with the color palette. Makes it feel consistent with the earlier movies despite the new era

Movie looks fun. Not 100% sure it feels like an Indiana Jones film (to the point where the return of the main theme during that trailer felt almost out of place) but it seems likely to be enjoyable in its own right. I had for whatever reason bought into the theory that Phoebe Waller-Bridge's character would be a relative of Marcus Brody from past films, but it looks like that's probably not the case. Makes sense to connect her to a new character they can shoot flashback footage of. Will be fun to see how that all plays out. Not sure if there would have been time for them to add him into this film, but fingers crossed that Disney now has their eye on Ke Huy Quan as they ponder the future of this franchise.

Maybe that's what Ron had in mind way back when his one idea for Monkey Island 3 was that

I figure his skeleton is ethereally glowing, which shines through multiple layers of clothing depending on the angle. Though the pixel art does lend credence to the "x-ray coat" theory the more that I look at it. Magic cursed coat. It would be the second-most interesting Monkey Island coat to recreate in a halloween costume

I asked the Bing robot what it thought, and it came up with a few examples. what are some of the best easter eggs in Return to Monkey Island? I tried to press it for its own opinion, but I guess it doesn't have one. I think Microsoft may have cracked down on its sense of creative expression. In your opinion, what would you say is the most interesting or obscure reference to a past game in Return to Monkey Island?

Oh fun! I was never 100% happy with the upscaling filters on ScummVM, so it'll be neat to try the new shaders. 1:1 pixel art scaling was always nice for the older games, but the later games that attempted smooth linework will definitely benefit from some CRT blur.

That is indeed a shame - seems like that'd be more relevant now than ever.

So I did finish the first chapter. I was impressed by the efficiency of the setup, seemingly beginning in medias res with the characters on the ship already mildly familiar with each other. The narration filling in the details of the journey so far via Chandagnac's disinterested memories, just as they happen to cross his mind and intersect with his present thoughts and motivations, felt very organic. The detail of Captain Chaworth's insurance gambit was teased early enough to be intriguing, revealed just in time to feel tragic in itself, before it was then made largely moot by the captain's untimely death. Chandagnac's backstory as a puppeteer is introduced in a similarly gradual manner, and the imagery of both his actually improvised puppetry with the napkins, as well as his imagined self-puppetry during the swordfight, is quite charming.

Hey, that's the one I'm listening to! Happy that my library had it available as a digital loan. Anybody who has access to a library, I can't recommend enough that you look into whether they support Overdrive/Libby or Hoopla, because there's so much content available to library card holders. For a few moments I was worried that his narration was too dry, but you're right that it does really come to life once the characters begin interacting. I just got through the prologue, so I suppose I need to get caught up. I'm certain at one point I bought an iOS app that served as a standalone ebook/audiobook for On Stranger Tides. It was neat, but as is the way with old iOS apps, I can't find a single reference to it ever having existed.

I am intrigued.